


The Time War

by SaltAndSmoke



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Death, Eighth Doctor Era, Feels, Gallifrey, Genocide, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Other, Planet Destruction, Sad, Self-Destruction, Suicide, The Doctor on His Own, Time Travel, Time War, Time War Angst, War, Weapons of Mass Destruction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 23:16:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6214114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltAndSmoke/pseuds/SaltAndSmoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Universe is aflame. Everywhere there is battle, rage, and death; monsters and worse things roam freely. Two old and powerful civilizations are fighting against each other, and wherever they clash, millions die. All hope seems lost in a universe that has no use of Doctors any more, only warriors. In this chaos, the Doctor has lost his place and purpose. He wanders around aimlessly, trying to help and save but is always rejected by those he tries to help. Still, although he does not even believe it himself, he is the only one who can end this last war. But victory has a terrible price, and the Doctor finds himself confronted with the most difficult and most cruel decision he's ever had to make....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time War

**Author's Note:**

> This is a six-part fanfiction I have been writing at for ages now, and the last part is still missing. Only now I have made it to translate this story into english, and I have a wonderful beta-reader who helps me and corrects my mistakes (Thank you!). They also inspired me to write this short story in the first place.   
> I am blatantly ignoring canon here by making Eight my prothagonist and putting HIM through the dangers and perils of the last Time War, instead of the War Doctor. It also has to be said that I don't know too much about classic who, which is why some details here might appear so some of you as VERY dodgy (Sorry).   
> I hope you'll enjoy reading it, still! (comments are, as always, appreciated!)

Something hit the outer hull of the ship with enormous power and made the bridge shake. The material shrieked; the ground vibrated and the dull roaring of exploding hydrogen tanks echoed through the cruiser's corridors.  
The next hit brought the ship completely out of balance. The floor flipped to the side; the emergency generator's red lights flickered wildly and the sounds of shattering glass and bursting steel filled the air.  
But no screaming.  
No wailing, no sobbing.  
No clamour.  
It did not smell of panic. Just of smoke, soot and gasoline.  
_Good._

Through the thick, oily black clouds of smoke, it was hard to figure out anything; but he knew where his own ship was located. He could sense her: hardly five metres away from him, and she was worried. She was calling him and wanted him to hurry. The outer hull of the cruiser would not withstand the attack much longer and as soon as it was torn open.... 

He'd done what he could. He had to go.

The third blow hit the long side of the ship with a cruel force that ripped the steel apart and threw the ship sideways. The Doctor lost the ground under his feet and was smashed against a dashboard. Glass shards ripped at the skin of his palms; and the back of his head hit a monitor, hard.  
The world vanished into a blur.  
Pain raged through his nervous system like a living beast: burning, clawing, shrieking. The signals the TARDIS sent him got urgent, begging. He could hear her engines roaring through the mist that was filling his head like cotton. She wasn't worried any more. She was terrified.  
Data flooded his brain and measured values. The one for sulfur dioxide was alarmingly high. The ship's electricity supply had broken down entirely and gathering from the loss of air in the lower chambers, there was a leak in the starboard side of the cruiser.

Pushed by the TARDIS' pleas, the Doctor pulled himself up by a lever that was uselessly swinging from side to side, ignoring the pain that shot through his cut palms. Wherever he put his hands to steady himself, he left black, wet smears of blood; and by now the bridge was in a such pitiful lateral position, that he was more crawling than walking. Astonishingly, despite everything that had happened, the artigrav nets were still working. Good Sycoractic-quality work. 

When he stopped for a moment to catch his breath – or better, to try and suck a little oxygen out of the syrup-thick air – his gaze went out through one of the windows. The pane was sooty but some parts of the glass were still clear enough to take a look outside.  
And outside... Outside, where there should have been nothing but endless, vast, black, devastatingly empty space... Hell had broken loose. 

Beyond the soot-blackened window of the leaking battleship, a monstrously sized inferno was taking place. A Dalek armada, of about one-hundred ships, had locked its jaws around a fleet of the Sycoractic Majestic Guild, and the Sycorax were losing. There was no sound in the vacuum of space, but the shock waves of the exploding Sycoractic ships were powerful enough to rip apart the ships next to them, taking them down too. Pieces of wreckage shot through space like shrapnel: speeding up as they got caught in the orbit of the planet below, never stopping, never slowing down.  
Flying through vacuum.  
Without any resistance to stop them.  
Wherever they hit, they tore open the outer hulls of ships, crashed into tanks, pierced metres thick glass and cut through umbilicals.  
Wreckage was the real danger when it came to battles in space. More effective than any bullet but unpredictable – and impartial .

Another shock wave made the deck shake again and the Doctor realized his situation.  
His lungs burning, his head droning, his eyes watering he stumbled forward, towards the blue shimmer and the familiar roaring of ancient engines, until his outstretched, trembling fingers touched the wood of a blue police office box.  
He did not need a key, the door was not locked and swung open at first touch. The TARDIS enlarged her oxygen field and pulled him inside, where he broke down on the warm wooden floor, coughing and panting.  
Behind him, the double doors of impressive size fell shut with a booming slam and the engines started working by themselves, scratching and wheezing.  
The sound was full of disapprovement and he knew that she was reproaching to him.  
Her middle column was the only source of light in the room; a blue-ish, cool blaze; and the emotions she sent him were just as cool and reserved. 

Groaning, he rolled onto his back and covered his long face with sooty, blood-crusted hands.

_ I am sorry. _

She did not show that she had received his apology but kept on humming in the same low pitch.

_ I am sorry.  _

He got to his feet and staggered over to the console. The main monitor turned in his direction by itself and the Doctor could feel himself smile ever so slightly. She could never stay mad at him for long.  
The picture appearing on the screen was a shot of the moment before they had fled. The Sycoractic fleet did not consist of much more than wreckage. The ship they had left a second ago had burst into five parts as a swarm of shrapnel had hit it.  
Below its yellow-ish gleaming atmosphere, Syreca burned. The home planet of the Sycorax had only been under attack for a few days now; but it was doomed already. When the war had broken out, the Sycorax had allied with the Daleks at first, united against the same foe, the empire of the Time Lords. It had been thought to be a useful association: The Daleks had promised the Sycorax two of the seven systems of Kastaborus and absolute solidarity as soon as the war was won. In return, all of their new allies’ armies were available for the Daleks to use as cannon fodder.  
Sycorax were fearless warriors but bad strategists and really not very bright. Only after their third attack on one of the Time Lords' outposts, they had realized that they had been lured into a trap with empty promises, and that it was difficult to rule two ring systems if one was dead.  
Even so, it had taken them three more years to finally turn against the Daleks and break the contract. What was happening down there now, planetside, was the reward for their bravery and loyal service.  


Syreca fell and with it the three millennia old Sycoractic realm, burning to ashes and soon forgotten.  


The Doctor turned away.   
He had tried to help. He had wanted to save the cruiser's crew. The royal family and the crew. It had been one last, desperate attempt of fleeing, not a war battalion that was floating through space before a destroyed planet, now torn apart by Davros and his army. The Doctor had wanted to get them onto his ship, granting them safety and a short break from violence to catch their breaths. He had never cared about his people’s quarrels with other species. He was not part of any party and on no one’s side but his own in this war.  
The problem was, that the Sycoractic royal family had not believed him. They had refused to come with him, to even go anywhere near a Time Lord ship, they had actually wanted to kill him there and then but the sudden attack had prevented them from doing so. 

They were all dead now.   
Burned. Suffocated. Crushed.  
He had not been able to save them.  
  
_I am so sorry._  
  
The TARDIS made a small, soothing noise: something between clicking and humming. It sounded comforting.  
He put a hand on her console and laid his head back to look at the cables running over the ceiling.  
  
_I couldn't save them. I can't save anyone. It's not my fault. They never want to be saved. They’d rather die than reach out for a Time Lord's hand. I...what am I supposed to do? What's my purpose, where is my place in this Universe when civilizations are ripping each other apart and burning?_  
  
He never got an answer. 

“Where are we now?”

His voice rang through the empty room and there was no one there to hear him. Once again he was reminded that he was alone. Always alone.  
He pulled a monitor towards him and stared the coordinates it showed, frowning.  
They were far away from Syreca, but had not travelled far in time. Since the High Council on Gallifrey had locked the Time War into the Time Lock, time travel was almost impossible. No way out. And no help to be expected from outside.   


Discouraged, he leaned against the console and stared at the bookshelves lined up on the walls. He had felt helpless many times before, but it had never been as bad as now. Then again, nothing had ever been as bad as this.  
Some already called it ‘The Last Time War’ as if it was the end of everything. And probably they were right.

Since the Daleks had started to call their troops together to march against Gallifrey a decade ago, the situation had grown worse and worse. A billion years of rulership and the control over all of time and space had made the Time Lords careless. They had lived in the belief that the universe was theirs, and nothing and no one in it could harm them. They were too mighty, too important to be erased. Besides, the last Time War had been won almost two millennia ago.  
They had never seen the first attack coming and had reacted way too ponderously.

And now here it was: the biggest, cruellest, most terrible and devastating war of them all.  
And there was no one to end it

. The Doctor knew that there would be no winners in this, just as well as the High Council did. Where two civilizations this size clashed together, nothing but death and doom could remain on both sides. All he could do was soothing the woe wherever he could, but even that much he was denied. And ever since the Daleks had opened the rift in time and space that ran through the Medusa Cascade, time bled out and made everything worse.   
Time was an undefined horror, always just out of reach but steady, always there. When it leaked, it brought ruin to everything it touched, resurrecting the dead, taking away years of a creature's life within a heartbeat and making constructions crumble to dust.  
Up to now no one had been able to close the rift again, all that had been done was building up the Time Lock around this decade to stop the outpouring time from flooding not only the present but also the past and future Universe.  
Within the Time Lock utter chaos ruled, a living hell no one could escape from. 

The Doctor knew that sooner or later they would all burn, and there was no way to prevent that from happening.  


He pushed his hands through his hair and whimpered as his fingers got tangled up in blood-encrusted strands and ripped at his scalp.  
He had another look on the coordinates and stopped in confusion.  
_What..._  
It was undeniable. The TARDIS had materialized near a large planet.  
Not as vast as Gallifrey; but just as populated.  
Arcadia.


End file.
